How Trump’s erratic nuclear posture could spark a new arms race

President Trump will be inaugurated on 20 January. We don’t yet know what a Trump presidency will look like, but some of the policies he and his team have already floated would have irreversible ramifications. But resistance is far from futile, as we explore in this four-part special.

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FROM the moment Donald Trump is inaugurated on Friday, he will be accompanied constantly by a device that launches nuclear missiles within 4 minutes – widely known as “the button”. Is it safe under his finger?

Many have been worrying about that question ever since Trump first seemed likely to become president. His mercurial nature and contradictory policy statements make him an unpredictable custodian of the US nuclear arsenal.

The stakes are high. “The use of even a single nuclear weapon, anywhere in the world, would be a global humanitarian, environmental and economic disaster,” says Derek Johnson, head of anti-nuclear group Global Zero, for reasons ranging from nuclear winter to a lowered threshold for subsequent nuclear attacks.

But even if Trump never does press the button, he could permanently alter the geopolitical landscape by relaunching nuclear proliferation.

On 22 December he tweeted that the US “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability”, which he has called “broken”. In fact, reviews have found the technology itself is fine. Nonetheless, the US is launching a $35 billion-per-year modernisation programme, while Russia has already started a nuclear upgrade. “We seem to be sleepwalking into this new nuclear arms race,” warns veteran nuclear official Bill Perry. That could push smaller nuclear powers to expand as well.

“Every apocalypse has a silver lining – a Trump presidency may limit some nuclear threats”

As planned, modernisation will mean building next-generation nuclear weapons. This would deal the final blow to the tottering Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which tells nuclear powers to disarm, not re-arm. New weapons also need testing, which would kill the 1992 nuclear testing moratorium and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

This would also encourage more countries to go nuclear, such as Japan, which has plutonium and is thought capable of building a bomb in months. And after Trump’s hints that the US may not continue to guarantee the security of long-standing allies, “Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt might decide that they can defend themselves only by acquiring nuclear weapons,” warns Nouriel Roubini at New York University.

The biggest risk is Iran. Trump has called the 2015 agreement under which Iran promised to limit its nuclear activities “the worst deal ever negotiated” and has promised to “dismantle” it — leading scientists to protest that its loss would lead to more conflict in the Middle East.

But he could also limit some nuclear threats. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who is expected to greet the inauguration with missile or nuclear tests, made real progress towards a deliverable weapon in 2016. Trump tweeted that “it won’t happen”. And it might not: Trump has said he is prepared to talk with Kim. Talks have worked before, halting North Korean weapons development in 1994 – until their cessation let it resume.

Trump could also take US missiles off alert, the status which makes “the button” so dangerous. His apparently close relationship with Russia has led some to hope he might deactivate this relic of the cold war: in fact, this week he suggested the US could lift sanctions on Russia in exchange for joint nuclear arms reductions. What will he suggest next week?

This article appeared in print under the headline “The return of Dr Strangelove”